Americans still not convinced oil companies are looking out for them

From the Wilderness Society comes a startling revelation: Americans Don't Believe Bush, Industry Claims on Gas Prices, Poll Shows. 54% do not see more drilling as a solution to high gas prices, 76% want policymakers to focus on new energy technologies rather than expanding exploration and drilling for more oil, 63% said that the President's proposal was "more likely to enrich oil companies than to lower gas prices for American consumers."

This is surprising to me because last night when watching the television my remote broke and I was forced to endure almost 15 seconds of the Bill O'Reilly Mental Insanity Themed Programme. Before I heaved a lamp into the screen, saving my sanity, I heard him and a Republican strategist opine on how drilling was such a winner for Republicans. Because despite the fact that not one drop of oil will flow for at least a decade, despite the fact that the best case scenario is a barrel of oil going down 20 cents in cost, and despite the fact that land and coastline has been already leased for drilling that oil companies aren't even bothering to use, people will hear "drilling" "oil" and be convinced of it's rightness. Hell. John "It's not pronounced boner" Boehner could barely contain his glee as he flogged his drill boner and opined on how wildlife like oil derricks.

Drilling = good = Republican = votes could still be true, you'll be hard pressed to find the media actually discussing the consequences and repercussions of drilling, let alone the length of time it will even take for any thing to happen. This is standard media behavior, discuss the politics not the facts. But somehow that seems not to have happened, people seem to get that it won't help immediately. They get that money and time should be better invested in alternatives and they get that oil companies would liquefy and refine you if they had a method for it. I don't know how it happened, perhaps just rampant anger and cynicism after months of $4 buck gas, but it happened. Let's hope it stays that way so we can actually make an energy and transportation policy beyond "Fuck it, Jeb. Call the Saudis and buy more, the Hummer's bone dry."